An Acquired Taste
by Mindy35
Summary: CASKETT. The morning after, Castle makes Beckett a s'morelet.


Title: An Acquired Taste

Author: mindy35

Rating: K+, implicit sex and melted chocolate

Disclaimer: Marlowe is the man.

Spoilers: minor, "Punked"

Pairing: Castle/Beckett

Summary: The morning after, Castle makes Beckett a s'morelet.

-x-x-x-

"O-kay…!" Castle shimmied the carefully prepared s'morelet onto a plate for her. "Now, if you like this then I will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Universe meant us to be together, that we are the ultimate soulmates and nothing will ever, ever come between us."

Clad in black leggings and one of his t-shirts, Beckett slid up onto the stool opposite him. "You're putting an awful lot of pressure on this breakfast, Castle."

"This is not breakfast," he said, a note of import in his voice.

She raised her brows. "It's not?"

"Well, it's not _just_ breakfast. _This–" _he placed the plate in front of her with a grin and a flourish, "is a _s'morelet_."

Beckett just peered at it. "Hm. And what exactly is a s'morelet?"

"I'm not telling. I want you to taste and see for yourself. And I dare you–" he paused for dramatic effect, handing across a fork, "to say you don't like it."

"Okay then…" Eying him briefly, Beckett took the fork, cut off a corner of s'morelet and ate it. She chewed, she swallowed. She put down her fork, she told him, "I don't like it."

Castle's spine straightened, his grin vanishing. "You're kidding me. Right? I mean, you're messing with me right now, aren't you?"

"_You're_ messing with _me_," she muttered, prodding the s'morelet with a finger, making it bleed chocolate. "Who puts chocolate in eggs? And is that a marshmallow in there?"

"More than one, yes."

"Who _does_ that? Who _likes_ that?"

Castle shrugged. "I do."

"Anyone else, besides you?"

"None that I've found so far."

She gave a little snort. "So what makes you think that I would?"

"Because you are my soulmate," he insisted, visibly confused. "We are fated by the Universe to be together for the rest of our lives."

Beckett leant back in her seat, arms folded. "Not if I gotta eat that every morning, we're not."

Castle drew in a breath then let it out, studying her grimly for a moment. "Okay. Just tell me straight up. How much do you hate it? On a scale of one to ten?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to decide if I can love a woman who hates my s'morelet."

She shrugged one shoulder, laughing under her breath. "It's not meant as a personal insult, Castle. It's just…weird."

"But that's the _whole point_, don't you see?" He leant forward, cupping eager hands about the plate in front of her. "Its brilliance is _in_ its weirdness."

She cast him a look from the corners of her eyes. "I think you just described yourself."

"And didn't you hate me at first?" he asked, beginning to head around the cluttered kitchen island towards her.

"Yes, I did," she said with a deep nod.

"Then you grew used to me," he murmured, voice lowering the closer he got.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion but she swivelled towards him in her seat. "Ye-ah…"

"Then you fell in love with me," Castle said, hands sliding up her thighs as he stepped between them. "Didn't you?"

"You know I did," she muttered, hands coming to rest on his forearms.

"And now…" he leaned in to kiss the bare shoulder his shirt wasn't doing its job of covering, "you couldn't imagine your life without me, could you?"

She ran a hand over his sleep-ruffled hair, locking her legs loosely about him. "I have become…oddly attached to your particular brand of crazy, I will give you that."

"Exactly. I'm just saying," he pulled back to look at her, laid a soft kiss on her lips, "maybe you should give my s'morelet another chance. Because you may just come to love it in much the same way that you came to love me."

She pushed him back a bit, both hands on his chest. "And what if I always want my eggs and my chocolate separate? Huh? What then?"

"Well…" Castle considered this momentarily. "I may not like it but I could learn to accept it."

She swallowed a smile. "That's big of you, Castle."

"But even so," he went on, leaving one hand resting on the small of her back while the other retrieved her fork, "for the sake of our future happiness and the happiness of our future s'morelet-loving children…will you please give it another try?" He cut another corner and inched it towards her mouth. "Just…one…more…bite?"

Beckett rolled her lips inwards, thinking a moment. Then she huffed, opened her mouth and let him feed her the s'morelet.

He watched eagerly as she chewed. "Well…?"

She tried to school her face to neutrality but did not succeed. "It's disgusting."

Castle's head dropped with a defeated sigh.

"But," she added hastily as the thing went down, "in an _interesting _kind of way. I guess there's something about it that is…"

He looked up slowly, brows half lifted in expectation. "Yes?"

"I'm not saying I want to eat it every day," she was quick to inform him.

"But?" he prompted, mouth twitching upwards.

"But it's….it's certainly," she patted his chest with one hand, "…something."

Castle tipped his head to one side, eyes glowing with infinite tenderness and utter scepticism. "Are you just saying that because you love me and you want to make me feel better about our ultimate fatedness?"

She nodded once. "Pretty much, yeah."

"I'll take it," he grinned anyway.

She waved a hand at the stovetop and the discarded frypan. "Well, I'll take a normal omelet while you're at it."

"Coming right up," he answered, scurrying back around the island and beginning to crack eggs into a bowl.

Beckett slipped off her stool and headed for the coffee pot, pouring them each a cup. She laid his by his elbow then leaned her hip against the counter, sipping her brew, muttering into its depths, "And you are so not feeding that weirdness to our kids, by the way."

Castle cast her a sidelong look as he whisked her eggs. "Well, since I'll be the one being a good house husband and looking after the kids while you run around being a super cop and saving the city from bad guys I really don't think you'll have much of a choice in the matter." He tapped the whisk on the edge of the bowl then raised it in the air, gazing into nothing for a moment as though envisaging their not-so-distant future. "Dad's famous s'morelet will be the treat they all cry for at Christmas and on birthdays and during family holidays in the Hamptons." He glanced down at her, forehead crumpled in consternation. "You wouldn't deny our kids their favorite breakfast-slash-dessert, would you? The one their brilliant daddy invented and lovingly presented to their ungrateful mommy the morning after they did the nasty for the first time in their long life together?"

She rolled her eyes, took another sip. "Last night was not the first time we did…that."

He kissed her neck. "I know but it sounded better to say it was."

"Well, either way," she muttered, heading back to her stool to await her breakfast and dragging a hand across his back as she passed, "you have put _way _too much thought into this."

"Trust me," Castle smiled, looking at her from beneath his brows. "It's gonna happen. All of it. Just the way I imagine it."

"Why?" she mused, a smile lifting her own lips. "Because the Universe fates it?"

Castle scooped up some chocolate from her unwanted s'morelet, giving her a wink as he sucked it from his finger. "You better believe it, baby."

_END._


End file.
